TheBlaze in an email interview with the Brooklyn-based photographer Stéphane Missier (a.k.a. Charles le Brigand) learned he stumbled upon the strange sight when riding his bicycle on December 30. He was on his way to take photos of devastated beach homes when he saw the parking lot.

“I knew the city was using the parking lot as a debris transfer site but I wasn’t expecting such an eerie landscape,” he said to TheBlaze.

He described them as looking like the “dark side of the moon, the Sahara [desert] and pre-Columbian pyramids.”

“Also, there were all kinds of construction and hauling trucks on the site as well as generators, watch towers, and pole lights, so I really had the impression of being on another planet — on some kind of spatial station,” he shared with TheBlaze. “The wind was pretty strong too and really accentuated that lunar feel.”

(Photo: Stéphane Missier a.k.a. Charles le Brigand)

Missier wrote on his website about the photos that he believes the sand shoveled from the streets and dumped on this location was shaped into pyramids by the winter wind.

Eventually, Missier wrote he was kicked out by “courteous” sanitation police officer.

We asked Missier how he thinks the city has been recovering.

“The streets are clear, but that doesn’t mean people are OK,” he responded.

See more of the photographs by Missier (aka Charles le Brigand) here. Find more of his work, which he wrote on his website is inspired by “everything raw and gritty,” on his Flickr stream here.